mailing list archives

Hello,

I would like to understand what is the point of namespace.
Since, for separator for the first level, it can be returned with
requesting LIST "" "%".
I don't understand how it should be shown in a user agent.
Why LIST would not be sufficient for that ?

What I was planning to do for a user agent was to request NAMESPACE
and do a LIST on each namespace so that the user can choose which
mailbox of any NAMESPACE to subscribe.

Since NAMESPACE won't give a description of what the namespace is, I
don't know how the user would choose a specific NAMESPACE to show for
the subscription.

-- 
DINH Vi?t Ho?

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, DINH Vi?t Ho? wrote:
> I would like to understand what is the point of namespace.
> Since, for separator for the first level, it can be returned with
> requesting LIST "" "%".

Not correct.

Namespaces are independent hierarchies, and may even have a completely 
different hierarchy delimiter.  They are NOT top-level items in the 
default hierarchy.

For example, in UW imapd, the default namespace has a delimiter of "/" in 
the default ("") hierarchy, but can also access newsgroups in the "#news."
hierarchy with the "." delimiter.

> I don't understand how it should be shown in a user agent.
> Why LIST would not be sufficient for that ?

LIST only lists within a single namespace.

> What I was planning to do for a user agent was to request NAMESPACE
> and do a LIST on each namespace so that the user can choose which
> mailbox of any NAMESPACE to subscribe.

Please don't.  You should only list a namespace if the user specifically 
asks to do so.  Some namespaces may be huge.

Just add the namespace to a menu, opened when the user requests it.

> Since NAMESPACE won't give a description of what the namespace is, I
> don't know how the user would choose a specific NAMESPACE to show for
> the subscription.

That's like writing a file browser that says "since the directory won't 
give a description of what the directory is for, I should list all the 
directories."

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

On 6/14/07, Mark Crispin <MRC@cac.washington.edu> wrote:
> > What I was planning to do for a user agent was to request NAMESPACE
> > and do a LIST on each namespace so that the user can choose which
> > mailbox of any NAMESPACE to subscribe.
>
> Please don't.  You should only list a namespace if the user specifically
> asks to do so.  Some namespaces may be huge.
>
> Just add the namespace to a menu, opened when the user requests it.

ok, that's mostly the same as what I described.

-- 
DINH Vi?t Ho?

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, DINH Vi?t Ho? wrote:
>> Just add the namespace to a menu, opened when the user requests it.
> ok, that's mostly the same as what I described.

OK, great!  As a further refinement, you may want to split the namespaces 
by the categories and have an option to turn off namespace support 
entirely.

Note that UW imapd shows the namespaces that the software supports, but 
that doesn't necessarily mean that those namespaces are in use in a 
particular installation.  It's sort of like a listing of /dev on UNIX; 
/dev/fd7 doesn't mean that there are 8 floppy drives!  ;-)

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.